Thursday, November 29, 2012

I know it’s going to be a
long winter when I start immersing myself in travel books and it’s not even
officially, winter yet.

A Walk in Londonby Salvatore Rubbino is a travel book that gives us
a child’s eye-view while exploring London’s city
centre, visiting many well-known landmarks such as BuckinghamPalace, Big Ben bell and clock tower, Trafalgar Square, ConventGarden,
St. Paul’s
Cathedral, plus many more sights.

Each slightly oversized 2-page
spread is filled with details of each location with additional quirky,
sometimes random, bits of information scattered across them. For instance did you know that St. Paul’s Cathedral’s
dome weighs about 64,000 tons? Or, that every year in Britain, 300
million fish and chips dinners are eaten? Or, that
BuckinghamPalace has 775 rooms? Or, that
double-decker buses have been in use since the 1930s? These factoids
help us learn more about London.
But for our young narrator it’s all about
talking with the pelicans at St. James Park, sitting on the lions in Trafalgar Square,
and enjoying the street entertainers in ConventGarden.
A ferry ride down the Thames gets a 4-page pull out that gives us a panoramic
view of the shore line the further orientates us with the sights to be found
between the Tower of London and the Palace of Westminster,
such as the Globe Theatre and the London Eye.
If you check the front and end pages you will be able to name the
bridges you seen in the fold out. Good
for mapping skills and geographic thinking.

The illustrations are done
in mixed-media with a fairly muted palette that conveys a very
retro-style. It reminds me of old travel
posters from the 1950s and 60s.

This is a fun exploration of
a wonderful city. This is exactly how the book comes across: when in London, there is a lot to see, do and enjoy. Our narrator and her mother have a very busy,
full day as they travel around the heart of London and I'm glad I was able to join them. Any respite from winter is welcomed.

Monday, November 26, 2012

Recently, we received a
really interesting book.(Yes, another
one.)It had been recommended a couple
of years ago by a student-teacher and I've had my eye on it ever since.It’s one of those books that get my brain synapses
popping but, nevertheless, will not be an easy ‘sell’.It has no direct ties to the Alberta curriculum but I
still feel has tremendous potential in the classroom.

The book -- The Ruins of Detroit by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre. It’s an oversized, coffee table-type book that's filled with fascinating photographs of inner city Detroit.
The introduction provides enough
context to help us understand what we are seeing as we browse through the volume. Page after page shows derelict
office buildings, factories, houses, schools, theatres that have literally
gutted the once thriving city. These
abandoned buildings once showcased the promise of early 20th century America when the boom in car manufacturing resulted in people's mass migration into the
city to get their bit of the pie. Good
wages from union jobs meant disposable income to buy houses and cars. But as the social and political circumstances changed and the way the city was developed changed,life moved out to the suburbs, slowly but
inexorably resulting in fewer people in the inner core.

Looking through the pages of
the book there are questions and emotions to be reckoned with.

How could these buildings
have just been left? Books still line
the shelves of libraries and police files litter the floor of a police
station. Schools are still filled with desks,
lab equipment and student projects. Why
were things not packed up?

Besides the big question "why, why, why?" punctuating my brain while looking at these images,I’m thinking just how sad it is. Some of the architecture of the buildings was
beautiful and it is a shame to see their grandeur utterly forsaken. I guess
it’s a little reassuring to think that nature will reclaim urban areas as the
prairie slowly takes over and deer, foxes and flocks of pheasant return.

The photographs themselves
are gripping, falling into that category of ‘terrible beauty’. The composition, clarity and overall layout
of the book effortlessly show us just how temporary, disposal and wasteful our
societies are today. (Do an image search in Google to see some of the photographs from the book.)

So, who would I recommend this book to? Certainly, students in
high school could use this in a social studies classroom. Looking at issues of economics (boom/bust
cycles with which Calgary is all too familiar), urban planning,
sustainability, architecture, and historical/contemporary views of civilization
can be supported by this book. I, also think that younger students in junior high will be
fascinated by these photos. I do wonder what kids would make of these images.

Pair this with the DVD Life After People and the book The World Without Us by Alan
Weisman to look at the consequences of human
impulses and what happens to our material culture when we are not around.

Today's Nonfiction Monday Event is over at The Miss Rumphius Effect. Check out other children lit blogs and what they're recommending.

Thursday, November 22, 2012

Step Gently Out by Helen Frost and Rick Lieder is a quiet meditation about observing the small wonders to be found in
nature. By quietly watching an array of
insects such as crickets, moths, praying mantis, bees and others on a blade of
grass or flower, the reader is drawn into a beautiful world of creatures captured in a single moment that gives us the opportunity to observe them.

"Bugs bite. Some drink blood. Bugs rob. They steal food from gardens and fields. Bugs kill -- mostly each other, but also plants, animals, even people sometimes. Bugs destroy.

They eat houses, clothes, and furniture. Bugs bug."

Glorious, photographic
close-ups of the insects display their beauty, complimenting the accompanying,
elegant poem. There is an easing of the day into night then into early morning.
The photo of a dew laden spider web lit with the rising sun is stunning.

All the insects are identified with a bit of information about their characteristics and
habits at the back of the book.

I don’t have a lot to say
about this book except that you won’t be disappointed when you spend some quiet
moments with it. Then go outside to see
what you can see and savor.

For us snowbound people,
you’ll have to wait until next spring to watch for insects, but you might want
to consider what happens to insects during the winter with Bugs & Bugsicles: Insects In the Winter by Amy Hansen. Connecting to nature
in winter is different but not impossible.

(Please, sir, may I have that
in a sentence? Each year, from Tanzania
to Kenya
an implausibility of gnus (wildebeests) traverse wide rivers to reduce the risk
of being caught by predators such as lions.)

This is an alphabet book
that presents a double page spread for each letter of the alphabet represented by
a collective noun for a group of animals with additional information about the
group behaviour of the animals. (See
above paragraph about migrating gnus.)

Some of the words provoke
beautiful imagery– an aurora of polar bears, a galaxy of starfish, or a
kaleidoscope of butterflies.

Some of the nouns are
playful – an embarrassment of pandas, a pandemonium of parrots or an
ostentation of peacocks, which, by the way, are recommended as a terrific guard
pets. Move over Fido!

Some of the language conveys
a sense of danger – a quiver of cobras, a shiver of sharks or venom of spiders.

Obviously, I haven’t covered
all 26 letters but you get the idea. There
is lots of creative, descriptive language to work into language arts and art
classes.

Speaking of art – the
illustrations are fantastic, too. Woop
Studios is composed of “four friends united by a love of graphic design, words
and images.” And, it shows. The
oversized book presents bold, poster-like pages with stylized illustrations of
the each animal group. Fonts, colours and uneven inking also contribute to a
feeling of posters from yesteryear.

Beautiful, playful and
provocative, this will work well with students
in upper elementary grades (5/6) to high school.

Today's Nonfiction Monday event is being held at Perogies and Gyoza. Check out the list of recommended nonfiction children's titles from around the blogosphere.

Thursday, November 15, 2012

November is the month to
officially celebrate the awesomeness of picture books. When you go to the website for Picture BookMonth you will find postings from authors and illustrators from the world of
children’s literature, writing about why they think picture books are
important. This continues until the end
of the month.

To illustrate how important picture
books can be, I’d like to tell you about a couple of students
(student-teachers) I've had at the reference desk this past week.

Both students are involved
with Calgary Reads, a program that matches university students with struggling
readers in elementary schools. Each student-teacher
asked me for recommendations for picture books for kids in grades 2 and 5. They had been asked to bring in a picture
book to read aloud to their assigned student as a way to get to know them. At this point, this is all they know –
nothing else. Not why the kids struggle with reading, not their gender or interests. Nada. So,
its wide open as to what they bring in.

And this is where the
challenge is – this first book may be what sets the tone for this experience
for both the elementary student and the student-teacher. Finding a good read aloud isn't the
problem. Finding one that will appeal to
either a boy or girl with unknown interests and diverse life experiences is a
bit more challenging.

My bias is to suggest
something humorous. I figure if you can
make a kid laugh, the door has at least been cracked opened. Once rapport has been established between the
student-teacher and the reader, there’s an opportunity for future sessions to be
more directed to the kids’ interests.

When
has being wrong been so funny? Meet a
befuddled rabbit who doesn't know a pair of underpants from a hat. But then neither do a variety of other
animals until donkey tries to set the record straight. Illustrations are great at conveying the
humour and confusion. Hilarious.

A
lovable but highly destructive pup is the centre of one family’s consternation
and extreme displeasure as he chews up the whole house – yes! Everything! Again the illustrations heighten the
hilarity.

This one is totally
over-the-top for its’ take on overly ambitious parents and their overachieving
children. Right from birth Baby Brains
is able to read newspapers, fix cars, go to school and becomes a world renowned
surgeon. But, deep down, he’s really
just a baby who wants the love and comfort of his parents.

While cruising the shelves
looking for funny books, I usually pull a few other books that I think might
have strong enough stories that transcend the many unknowns about the young
reader.

A city wide blackout reduces
one family’s various activities that typically keep them apart, to just being
with each other. Finding emergency
candles and a flashlight, enjoying the star-studded night sky and joining a
low-key street party create a strong sense family and community.

This book uses similes and
using mixed-media illustrations to tell us what the narrator’s friends and
teachers are like. His best friend Jack
is smart. He knows lots about geography, is as sharp as a pencil, curious
as a magnifying glass and precise as a microscope. The objects shown in his
‘portrait’ (a globe, a pencil, a magnifying glass and microscope) become the
pieces that construct Jack’s face in a simple collage. This book is playful and clever.

I have to confess I didn't actually recommend this one but only because it wasn't ready to be checked
out. Otherwise, I’d have been all over it.

This story is based on a
true and harrowing experience of a dog trapped on an ice flow in the Baltic Sea during a brutally cold winter. He survived adrift for two days until he was
rescued by a research vessel and eventually adopted as a crew member. Great story with a strong sense of drama made
all that much better because it’s based on a true incident.

So, these are just some of
my recommendations that I think would make a good first impression. Opening up the world to young children is
important and one, easy accessible way is through picture books. I’m hoping to get some feedback about how
these choices went over with the elementary students.

First impressions are important. Recommendations for putting your best foot forward?

Monday, November 12, 2012

I recently mentioned that I
had been very busy doing lots of workshops for student-teachers about using
resources in classrooms. This year, a
few instructors and I came up with a new spin on how to introduce the diverse
range of resources available to them from the Doucette Library, but within a
meaningful context. I've found that book-talking
or waving wonderful kits at students, though fun, isn't very effective. They don’t remember what they've seen or they
make lists of stuff that they’ll never look at again.

But, pulling bunches of
stuff (aka “packages” of juvenile fiction and nonfiction, kits, posters,
teaching resources) together centred around an idea like sound, nutrition or
the question, ‘What is art?’ and then letting students play and explore the
resources seems to produce a more thoughtful experience. Questions about the resources and follow-up
discussion get them thinking about how these resources can be used in their
teaching, what the resources add to the unit, and if are they worthwhile. Plus, the hands-on approach for the students
is way more engaging.

One of the ‘packages’ I
pulled together that kind of surprised me but totally sucked me in, was centred on marine life, specifically the giant squid. Since Alberta
is a prairie province, studying the ocean is not part of the curriculum. But this fascinating, creepy, slightly
repulsive, creature is too good to pass up, if the opportunity should
arise. You never know where the
interests of your students will go, right?

During the last few months I've come across pieces in the news and other odd bits of information about
these captivating creatures. I've always
been taken with the image of the giant squid’s eye from Steve Jenkins,ActualSize which shows the ‘actual size’ of the eye. It. Is. Big. : about 25 cm. (10 in.) in
diameter. Showing this illustration in a workshop always gets a response from
students.

Then a recommendation from
another blog prompted me to order Giant Squid: Searching for a Sea Monsterby Mary Cerullo and Clyde Roper (594.58 CeG 2012). I gobbled this book up. It briefly covers historical references to
this fairly unknown creature that tantalize us into wanting to know more. Scientific knowledge about the giant squid is
still relatively new since they live in the deepest regions of the oceans and
most information has been derived from dead specimens. Scientists have been pulling together slivers
of evidence for decades as if trying to solve an intriguing cold case. There are lots of photographs interspersed
between blocks of information.

But wait! There’s more! HereThere Be Monsters: the Legendary Kraken and the Giant Squid by H.P.
Newquist (594.58 NeH 2010) was already in the Doucette Library’s
collection. This book is a lot denser in
text formatting and information primarily about the colossal squid (14m or 45
ft long) and the giant squid (estimated to grow up to 13m or 43 ft long). Many of the illustrations are the same as in Giant
Squid. I found this one a more
thorough but slower read.

I recommend both books but
think the first book will appeal to younger kids and struggling readers more.

There were many more books
that I could have supplemented this topic with.

And, I did order a replica
of a giant squid beak for next time, so there’ll be one more resource to “oooo”
and “ahhh” over.

I love doing these kinds of
workshops. They present options for our
student teachers and resources that they are often unaware of. The accessibility of the internet has made
unit/lesson planning an interesting endeavor that can be too easily padded out
with multiple websites of varying quality.
Don’t get me wrong. I, too, am out
there looking for information on the net (see Ocean Portalfrom
the Smithsonian about the giant squid, if you’re really keen) but I'm still in
the camp that kids need real ‘stuff’ and books to touch and handle. I'm here to remind our upcoming-teachers-to-be
about that very thing.

Thursday, November 8, 2012

Janet Hutchinson is a colleague and kindred spirit when it comes to children's literature. She also works a day and half in the library in the school which her children have or are attending here in Calgary. Her experiences there provide her (and me by extension) the opportunity to see what teachers and kids do with the books we promote.

Today's posting highlights three fictional pieces that take us back to Europe during World War II. All three are new to me though Janet had already sold me on Code Name Verity which I've since ordered for the Doucette Library. What are your thoughts? Any recommendations that you'd recommend for Remembrance Day?

Lest we forget….a different take

So maybe it is just me – but do you know
how occasionally you read a book – and then the next book you pick up is
somewhat related? And then you find a third book that ties into the second? And
so on? Well, that happened to me this fall. It started with a book I read for
my book club, - a mystery, set in Sweden and moving back and forth between
present day Sweden and Sweden during the Second World War. Then I picked up the
next book on my pile – and it linked to the first. So this fall, I have read four different books
about events in the Second World War that I was less knowledgeable about. Three
of the books are intended for children or young adults, making them perfect
fodder for both my jobs.

The first book is Shadow on the Mountain by
Margi Preus. This is historical fiction, written about Nazi-occupied Norway
during the early years of the war. I did not know that Norway had been occupied
and so this book piqued my interest. The story’s main character is a teenage
boy, Kjell, drafted into the Resistance movement in Norway – initially, by
delivering letters, but eventually moving on to spy on the Nazis. The story details his increasing involvement,
but also offers the stories of three other characters – his sister, a local
bully and his former best friend. Ultimately, Kjell commits an error, which
uncovers his role as a spy and he is forced to flee Norway for Sweden on skis.
The book has been well-researched and includes maps, quotes, a pronunciation
guide and a brief history and timeline of the occupation. Based on a true
story, the authenticity rings through and it will be an excellent read for
Grade 6 and up.

The second book I read is My Family For the
War by Anne C. Voorhoeve. This book begins in Germany during the initial period
of Nazi persecution of Jews, but before the war officially started. Franziska
is a young girl with Jewish roots, but a practicing Protestant. Nevertheless,
she is sent to England on a “kinder transport” - a system that smuggled close
to 10,000 Jewish children out of Germany to safety. When Franziska leaves, it
is with the idea that her family will join her in England. But travel of Jewish
people is prohibited before her family can join her and Franziska is placed with
a Jewish family in England for the duration of the war. I found myself quite
entranced with this book. As a parent, I could (barely) imagine sending my
children away to safety – but from a child’s perspective, this must have been a
very confusing and upsetting time, with conflicting loyalties to family,
religion and countries. The author does
an excellent job of portraying that confusion and sense of loss – and reading
the story of Frances as she grows and matures during wartime England kept me
interested right to the end.

Finally,
the third book I read is Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Weins. This was, quite
simply, a fabulous read. I don’t want to get into too much detail, as it might
ruin the story. But take two young women – one with a talent for languages and
the other with an interest in, and ability to, fly planes. Put them into the
Second World War and what evolves is a story of friendship, of fears and fears
faced, of intelligence, true courage, faith and hope. It is not an easy read,
and for that reason, I would only recommend it for older students – Grade 10
and up, as the plot is complex and the narrative is third person diary (sort
of). But I want this book (I
borrowed it from the library) and have put it on my Christmas list. The book
gave me goose bumps and made me ask myself “Would I have the courage to do what
they did?”

War and war time is a subject of great
interest for many of the students at my school, helped no doubt, by the fact
that the school resides on one of the army bases “decommissioned” during the
1980s and 1990s. I also have a strong interest in these wars, helped along by a
daughter who is studying military history in university and stories told by my
father, a navigator in the Second World War. But these three books gave me different
lenses on the Second World War, ones that I won’t forget when November 11 rolls
around.

Monday, November 5, 2012

Respite

My instruction load the last
couple of weeks has prevented me from keeping up with my regular blog postings.
Sorry about that. But, the student
teachers are out in schools doing their practicum so, life in the library is a little calmer -- for the moment.

You know a book is going to
be good when the cataloguer in the office hands it to you and says, “This is
good.” And, I would have to agree.

Tomorrow’s Alphabet by George Shannon (411 ShT 1996 PIC BK) may be an
‘oldie’ but it’s one that I’ll be promoting in my future workshops. I think I picked up this title from one of
the blogs participating in this year’s Top 10 on the 10th eventso it's a favourite of another children
literature aficionado, too.

Here’ s why we like it.

This is an alphabet book
with an interesting premise.

“A is for
seed-- tomorrow’s APPLE” or

“B is for eggs—tomorrow’s BIRDS” and

“C is for milk—tomorrow’s CHEESE.”

You can easily see the
pattern. The objects focussed on are
pretty typical, nothing too out there. I
particularly liked “U is for stranger—tomorrow’s US.” And, problematic X and Z
are “X is for bones—tomorrow’s X-RAY” and “Z is for countdown—tomorrow’s ZERO”
with a rocket blasting off into space.

The illustrations are fine
but pretty basic.

But it is the premise that
really sold this book for me. I love the
potential for getting students to predict both ways, getting them to guess what
‘A’ word comes from seed or what do you need to have before you get your ‘B’
word, birds. This can easily be extended
into a class exercise coming up with your tomorrow alphabet. Because this has been around for a while already some of you will know it and perhaps used it in your classrooms. Please drop me a comment telling us about your experiences

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About Me

I am the reference coordinator at The Doucette Library of Teaching Resources, a curriculum library in the Werklund School of Education at the University of Calgary.
I love connecting education students and teachers with engaging and exciting resources for classroom teaching. I believe that resources that get me excited (or those that get you excited) are the ones with the best potential to get kids interested in learning about - well, everything. Finding those books that connect to the real world are the ones I enjoy promoting the most.